10-22-06

She smells like apples in the morning. I wake up and she’s already moving around, getting ready. She’s out the door before I’m done pulling strands of her long hair out of my mouth. We spoon at night and I dream about all-you-can-eat spaghetti plates. Her apartment is big and she’s allergic to my roommate’s cat, so we stay here most nights. I have my own drawer for clothes. Her windows are big, she has a great view, and she always buys the most expensive coffee. I would have dumped her two months ago if she didn’t live twenty minutes closer to my office.

Hands in Your Pockets Now

He looked at the glass animals while is girl friend wandered around the shop. He lingered at the Koala for a time. Then came a succession of looking at his watch and moving his head about in a darting fury looking for his partner. She was off browsing in an area full of pastel-colored dolls. She had a frown on her face. He looked at the Koala again. The cashier was chatting away with a man who was wearing bicycle shorts and a yellow windbreaker; she wasn’t looking at him in the slightest.

It was quartz he thought. His hand reached out to pick up the translucent marsupial, but stopped short. He read the sign taped to the lip of the shelf: “This isn’t a petting zoo. Don’t touch the figurines!” He turned back to his watch with a grimace on his face, and then he looked for his girlfriend again; she was still frowning, this time she was gently fingering a Precious Moments statuette in contemplation. The conversation between the bicyclist and the cashier warbled on under the wind-chimes and fairy wands.
He was most likely in the clear.

He didn’t know why; there was no way in hell he could ever explain or justify it, but goddamn did he want that carefully crafted crystal koala. He hadn’t even wanted to come inside this shop. It was a girly shop. It brought back horrible childhood memories of his parents demanding that he not touch anything. It was a damn do-not-touch shop. Everything was breakable. The big bad wolf wouldn’t waste his time with this place, he wouldn’t waste his breath. Yet here he was, lusting after an inch high koala with black eyes and a green glass bamboo shoot. He had looked at the price again, and it was the same as it was about twenty minutes ago. Too-the-fuck-much. Who in their right mind would pay $200 for a tiny magical koala? No one, that’s who. That’s why he was going to steal the little bastard.

So he looked around one more time. Everyone was in the same place, except for his girlfriend who was now poking the horn of a porcelain unicorn. Now was his time to strike. He casually hefted his camera bag onto his shoulder while reaching up to the second shelf. In that moment, the one before an action is completed but after the point of no return, he knew that he had made a grave error. And that moment seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Just as his hand closed around the prize he lost his footing, and that’s when the world came crashing down. His arm came crashing down through two shelves of glass sending a whole majestic realm of crystal creatures cascading to the ground. Like a Narnian apocalypse. As he landed he couldn’t help but think that the whole scene would have looked badass in slow motion. It would have been a shining, glittering metaphor for what was about to happen to his bank account.

The Usual

Cold water hit his face for the third time, now not so shocking. He looked at himself in the mirror and what did he see? A sopping shadow of a man, that’s what he saw. A coward. His face was angular, with a nose maybe a tad too big. His mussed up hair went in many directions. If you made all the theater kids stand in a cluster during gym and threw a football anywhere near them then took a picture just as they were trying to scatter, that’s what his hair looked like now. Raymond Daine, the biggest loser to set foot in this restaurant.

“You can’t let yourself talk to her,” he said to his reflection, “remember what you said last time?” He leaned forward on the counter putting his weight on his hands, looked down into the sink as he hunched up his shoulders and spoke in a self-depreciating tone, “I like your pretty necklace, it’s…pretty.” The awkward moment flooded back into memory like a kick in the balls.

The whole situation was like a kick in the balls, the kind where the kick just barely grazes your testicles and you think for a moment that you’ll be okay. But you won’t be okay, it’s just the calm before the storm. This girl, he liked this girl. Her name was Georgia. Not like the peach, because he hated that damned expression, every stupid guy who came into the restaurant thought he was the damn king of funny when he called her that.

Her name was Georgia and she was just clocking in while Raymond Daine was sulking in the men’s bathroom. She took her time before she went out onto the dining room floor, it was 5:00 am and there were only two guys drinking coffee, not much business this early. She slipped off her coat and put it in her locker, she used the small mirror on the inside of the door to fix her hair into a bun. Her eyes had bags, but there was a spark in them still. The bags were caused by working the morning shift for two years now, not so long that she regretted working in a diner instead of finishing school, but long enough to start showing an effect on her sunny disposition. She was young, she thought, bitter hateful regret would come when she was older. “Give it time,” she said to herself with a smile. She didn’t really know why didn’t change her shift or quit. She had crappy regulars, nothing like you saw in movies or on TV. They all smelled bad, and looked bad, and told stupid jokes. They were mean people, who hated the world and they tipped poorly. Except for Raymond she thought. To Georgia, Raymond was the perfect regular. He was smart, if awkward, and looked handsome in his own disheveled way. He was sweet and friendly, and he was probably the reason why she stayed. Every morning for two years she had served him breakfast. They had never really spoken more than a handful of times.

Georgia tied on her apron and adjusted her necklace. Raymond was sitting at the counter with his head in his hands when she walked out from the back. Her voice startled him as she poured his coffee and said, “Something bothering you today Raymond?”

“Please,” he said straitening his jacket, “call me Raymond.”

“I did,” she said smiling to herself as she placed the coffee pot back into the maker.

“Oh,” he said, staring first at her, then his menu. Of course the first thing he said would be such a stupid thing. His metaphoric balls were throbbing again.

“So, what’ll it be today Ray?” she asked leaning on her forearms, “The short stack again? Or maybe the tall stack today?” She wasn’t stupid, she knew how Raymond felt; a bat, on the moon, during a blackout, at midnight could see how he felt. She would occasionally try and provoke him into following up on his feelings for her, but in her own cowardice she limited these provocations to menu suggestions. Raymond having the typical guy brain that he had would sit wishing for a sign, any sign, that Georgia had interest in him, while constantly confused about her sudden and sporadic menu suggestions.

He looked up from his laminated menu, at her. She was staring at him, nearly leaned half over the counter, waiting for an answer. He knew she was perfection. She knew he was as good as she would ever get. His eyes slipped down to her cleavage, then to her pretty necklace, and then their eyes locked. And there was a holy moment where they were no longer Georgia and Raymond. They were alive. And then he said, after the gaze broke and they both cleared their throats, “Uh… yeah, just the short stack today. I’m watching my carbs.”

Voodoo

You’d never know by looking at her, that’s what I said to myself when I opened the closet door and began snooping around. That’s what you would say too, well that is if you had looked at her and then weeks or months after getting to know her, you opened her closet door and began snooping around.

There it was before me, and I still couldn’t believe it. Taped on the back wall of the closet, behind the button down blouses on hangers, were twenty or so drawings of characters. On closer inspection I saw that these drawings were done on cardboard and cut meticulously with what must have been and exact-o blade. No big deal, it’s just weird art project I thought. Until I noticed that they were all drawings of our friends, most of them guys. Cool dudes. Then I began to notice some people I had never seen in my life, and what was strange about these were the tufts of hair stapled in the middle of their tiny corrugated bodies and big ‘X’s’ drawn across them.

Freaked out, I looked around for more. I looked for mine. In the process I found a stack of books hidden beneath a pile of size four capri pants. Books with titles that read “What Can You Do With Voodoo” and “DIY: Head Shrinking,” I think I even saw a pamphlet that said “Sacrificial Rituals: Cool, or Not?”

Continuing my search in earnest now, I dug through everything that got in my way: Shirts, pants, shorts, skirts, skorts, and even her unmentionables. That’s when I found it. The explanation, or… at least as close to one as I was going to get. Sitting in the darkest corner of the closet was the box. The fabled box. The box that all girls keep. It is said to be full of love letters and ticket stubs, pictures and tiny keepsakes. It is the physical gathering and representation of all meaningful, emotional, and romantic moments in a woman’s life. Hers was empty. Empty, save a damn cardboard drawing of myself.

Quickly I put everything back into place, or as near to it as I could anyway. I closed the door to the closet, and began plotting my escape. Suddenly a light switched on behind me and a silhouette was cast onto the wall I was facing. It was her, and she was holding a knife. A sacrificial knife no doubt. When I turned to face my destiny, she said, “What’s the matter? I made quesadillas, you want one?” It was true, I could see the knife covered in strands of melted cheese.

“Sure,” I said, and that was it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Written for Intro to Fiction at the U of O